The Pagans by Arlo Bates

A >> Arlo Bates >> The Pagans

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14

"Was I ever guilty of such commonplace attempts at epigrams as that?"
returned Arthur. "If so it is certainly a good thing that I have given
up repartee for matrimony."

"Oh, that is brilliant beside many of your attempts, I assure you. And
as for your giving them up--I reserve my decision."

"You shall see, skeptic," he said lightly. "I expect to change the face
of the whole world if necessary."

"It is a common error of ardent temperaments," she returned pleasantly,
but with evident sincerity, "to assume that a state of feeling can
change the world."

"But I must, I will," he began eagerly. Then the light died out of his
face and he ended with a shrug.

Helen put up her hand with an impulsive gesture, as if about to speak.

Then letting her arms fall by her side, she turned to unlock the studio
door, which by this time they had reached.

The bas-relief was still shrouded in its damp envelopes, which Helen
carefully removed, keeping Fenton away, that he might first see the
work as a whole, and not lose its legitimate effect by catching
fragmentary glimpses as it was uncovered. When at last it was fully
disclosed, she called him to her as she stood before it.

"By Jove! That's stunning!" he exclaimed, after an instant's pause,
which gave him time to see it fairly. "Helen, you have outdone
yourself! That figure is simply superb. I hadn't an idea you would come
out so well. I'm wonderfully proud of you."

"You are more amiable than ever," she responded; but her flushed cheek
showed that she was touched by his earnest praise. "For that figure I
have to thank Ninitta's posing. She is an inspiration."

"But Ninitta did not inspire that splendid head," observed Arthur,
pointing with his cane at the December, "and you evidently did that
_con amore_. By Jove! It's Grant Herman, as I live!"

As he spoke he turned and saw Ninitta on the threshold.

"Shall you want me to-day?" the latter asked of Helen.

"What made that girl look so savage?" Fenton questioned as the door
closed behind the model.

"She perhaps chooses to be jealous of me," Helen replied composedly.

"_Elle a peutetre raison_."

"Perhaps."

"You say that too calmly by half," was his gay response. "Yet as every
work a woman does has a man for its end--I learned that from the
classics; Penelope, you know, and even washwoman Nausicaae--I suppose it
is fair to assume this had. Only who is the man?"

Helen flushed slightly. She recalled the ambition with which she had
begun this work, to make the man beside her praise its completion; and
she was conscious that before she finished it was the praise of Herman
for which she strove.

"It is filthy lucre that inspires me," she replied steadily. "I need no
other incentive."

They walked about the studio, talking of the bas-relief as seen from
different points; of how it was to be cut for firing; and on the safe
ground of art they forgot all personal constraints, until the striking
of a clock aroused Fenton to a sense of the flight of time.

"I must go," he said. "I am no end glad I came. The truth is I am not
very well acquainted with this married man, and it is comfortable to
slip back occasionally into a familiar bachelor mood. However," he
continued with his brightest smile, "I like the Benedick far better
than I should ever have dreamed possible; and his wife is charming. And
I want to say, too," he added, "that I have a thousand times thanked
you for taking that vial before I went to be married. I'm in a spasm of
virtuousness just now, and it is pleasant to remember that I did not
have it that day."

They went down stairs and out into the soft, spring-like day,
sauntering homeward in a happy and accordant mood. Arthur urged Helen's
going home to lunch with himself and Edith, but to Helen the morning
was far too precious to be ended in a possibly inharmonious meeting
with Mrs. Fenton.

And that afternoon Herman sent for Mrs. Greyson in all haste. Ninitta
had vented her jealous rage upon the bas-relief, destroying the head of
December which she heard Fenton say must have been done _con
amore_, and the beautiful May for which she herself had posed.

XIX.

NOW HE IS FOR THE NUMBERS.
Romeo and Juliet; ii.--4.

Mrs. Fenton's wedding reception was largely attended. However strongly
the artist might savor of Bohemianism, his wife was connected with
certain prominent Philistines, and he had exhibited a most remarkable
readiness to have them present in force.

"Into the camp of Philistia itself," muttered Rangely to Bently, as
they elbowed their way through the crowd. "By the great horn spoon, if
there isn't Peter Calvin! Arthur calls him the Great Boston Art Greek.
That ever I should live to see the humbug under Fenton's roof-tree!"

"Pshaw!" returned Bently with an oath. "What a set of rubbishy old fobs
and dowagers there is here anyway. Is this the kind of people Fenton
means to know?"

"Means to know," echoed Rangely. "He's got to go down on his marrow
bones to get them to consent to know him. They patronize art, and that
means that they snub artists."

"Humph!" exclaimed Bently. "Is he sycophant enough to do that?"

"That's as you look at it. His wife probably decides the matter for
him. She very naturally likes to know what she would call 'nice
people.' How those women chatter! I wonder what they find to talk
about."

"Not necessarily any thing. They always talk all the same whether
they've any thing to say or not."

"How much of life is wasted in enduring people for whom one does not
care," philosophized Rangely, looking over the throng which filled to
overflowing the Fentons' somewhat limited rooms. "Ah! There is Dr.
Ashton. How do you do, Doctor?"

"As well as could be expected," the Doctor answered, "in this
antiquated assembly."

"Oh, Boston is only an antiquarian society," laughed Rangely, "and
these old tabbies are all honorary members. By Jove, though, there are
some awfully pretty girls here."

"I've observed that Boston girls are apt to be pretty when they give
their minds to it," remarked Bently. "Not when they wander round with
Homer under one arm and Virgil under the other and dyspepsia in the
stomach, but when they are deliberately frivolous."

The throng separated them at this moment, and Dr. Ashton went in search
of host and hostess. Arthur caught sight of his tall figure, and made a
sign at once of recognition and summons. Struggling between a young
Episcopal clergyman and a corpulent old lady, Dr. Ashton made his way
with difficulty to the spot where his friend was standing.

"You are the most married man I know, Arthur," was his greeting.
"Brigham Young wasn't a circumstance. I have been half an hour crossing
the room."

"Dr. Ashton, Edith; my wife, Will," was the only reply Fenton made,
unless one could interpret the quizzical glance he bestowed upon his
friend.

"I feel already acquainted with you," was Mrs. Fenton's remark, "I have
heard of you so often. My husband has spoken to me so much of his
friends that it is hard for me to realize that I do not know them
myself."

"You have been very little in Boston, I believe," Dr. Ashton said,
looking at her in a sudden surprise at remembering that he had seen her
face before.

"Very little," replied she, "I have been abroad a great part of my life
and--"

New claims upon her attention ended the conversation with that charming
abruptness characteristic of such an occasion, and the Doctor was left
to elbow his way out of the crush, with the sense of having done all
that would be required of him. He found a corner where he could watch
the hostess and fell to wondering whether Mrs. Fenton in her turn
remembered their previous meeting.

Edith Fenton was a slender, nun-like woman, too pale, with a smile of
wonderful attractiveness. "A woman to wear lilies," was the way Grant
Herman put it afterward; a remark which conveyed well the purity of her
face. Her ease of manner showed familiarity with the conventionalities
of life, yet in some vague way she seemed removed from the people by
whom she was to-day surrounded.

"She has been brought up in the old narrow ways," Dr. Ashton reflected,
"but there are great possibilities about her. She'll either be the
making of Fenton or send him to the dogs. She will scarcely find much
room in her house for many of his former friends, I fancy."

He stood watching the people and amusing himself with cynical
speculations until he saw Grant Herman's great figure among the guests.
He knew him but slightly and looked at him with an indifference which a
couple of hours later he regretted. Herman cared little for the
formalities of the occasion, and very likely might have gone away
without even being presented to the hostess had not Fred Rangely taken
him in charge and brought him safely through that ceremony. Now the
sculptor was looking for Mrs. Greyson, of whom he soon caught sight,
when he began making his way towards her. She however perceived him,
and with the feeling that she could not bear to meet him in public just
at this time, she evaded him by slipping into the window where her
husband was ensconced.

"Take me out of this, please," she said, "I am tired."

He gave her his arm without speaking, and together they made their way
from the room.

"I want to talk to you," he remarked easily. "Mayn't I walk home with
you?"

When she was ready they went together out into the starlit streets.
Neither spoke at first, each carrying on a train of thought to which
the other could have no adequate clew.

"Who is Arthur's wife?" Dr. Ashton asked at length. "I know she was a
Miss Caldwell, that she came from Providence, and that she has been an
orphan so short a time that they had a perfectly quiet wedding; but
that is the extent of my knowledge. Is she an artist?"

"An amateur," answered Helen. "She studied in Paris. He met her there.
She is a relative, I forget just how far or near, of Peter Calvin. She
seems to me an icicle. Think of Arthur's marrying a _religieuse_!"

"What is his game, I wonder," said her companion thoughtfully. "Do you
know when she was in Paris? Was it when we were there."

"Let me see," Helen responded, with a mental calculation. "Yes; she
must have been there the last year we were. Why? Did you ever meet
her?"

"Perhaps," was the careless reply.

They reached Helen's door as he spoke.

"Come in," she said. "Fortunately I can make you a salad. It is a long
time since we had a _petit souper_ together. I have, too,
something to say to you."

He followed her to the pretty parlor, and sat idly chatting while she
made her preparations for the supper.

XX.

THE WORLD IS STILL DECEIVED.
Merchant of Venice; iii.--2.

It was a dainty little table to which Helen invited her husband when
every thing was ready. The china was of odd bits picked up here and
there abroad, and it was now disposed with an artist's eye for color
and grouping. A tall bottle of Rhine wine had come from some mysterious
nook, and beside it were a pair of fine old German glasses, frail as
bubbles.

"I have always to offer my guests Rhine wine," Helen said, "for I've no
glasses for any thing else. Arthur is ungracious enough to object. He
does not like white wine as you do."

"I do like it," her guest answered, drawing the cork, "and so does
Arthur, only he does not know it. He has somewhere stumbled upon the
whim of pretending not to, and he can deceive himself more completely
than any other man I ever saw. Rhine wine is the most poetic of
beverages. It should go down like oil and only leave a fragrance like a
poet's dream behind it."

"That is quite a rhapsody for you, Will; only your cool tone gives it a
certain cynical flavor."

"I mean all I say, I assure you. Champagne is vulgar. It is the drink
of self-made snobs and cads who wish to pass for men of the world; but
Rhine wine is the drink for poets and artists."

"I am delighted to hear you defend it; it is very good of you, when I
happen to know you are not fond of it. It is a graceful return for my
inhospitality in not giving you your favorite Burgundy, but I haven't a
drop."

"Oh, don't mind the wine! I came to see you," Dr. Ashton said, with his
delightful smile. "How droll it was to see Arthur to-day. Do you think
he has really persuaded himself he is in love with his wife?"

"Arthur has great adaptability," Helen returned. "I think he believes
he is in love. I'm sure I hope you'll not feel it your duty to tell him
he isn't."

"I'm not Mephistopheles," answered Dr. Ashton, smiling, and watching
appreciatively as she made the salad.

Mrs. Greyson had dressed carefully for the reception from which she had
just come, and her cream-colored cashmere, with soft old thread lace,
and a bunch of amber-hued roses at the throat, became her as only a
dress chosen by an artist could. It fell away from her exquisite arms,
and from among the lace rose her beautiful neck, the stuff of her gown
setting off the lovely texture of her skin to perfection.

"I must not ruin my best attire," she said lightly, gathering it up.
"Now Ninitta has spoiled my bas-relief, it may be long before I get
more. I owe you a good deal, Will, for letting me study modeling in
Paris."

"It was pure selfishness," he returned good-humoredly. "I wanted to
keep you busy so that I might go my own way. But what about your
bas-relief? Who spoiled it? Who is Ninitta, and what has she against
you?"

"That is what I wanted to tell you."

She did not speak again for a moment, seemingly intent upon the exact
measurement of the ingredients of her salad. In reality she was
considering how best to present what she had to say. She mentally ran
over the points she wished to make, becoming thereby conscious that she
had herself come to no definite conclusions upon the topic she was
about to discuss. She looked furtively at her husband, noting his
attitude, his expression, and whatever her past experience enabled her
to construe into indications of his mood. As well and as long as she
had known this man, she was still ignorant of the key to his nature--
that feeling or motive which, touched in an ultimate appeal, would
always insure a response. Conscience is the fruit of the tree of
experience, and, taken in this sense, every man must be possessed of a
conscience, which by its inner voice re-enforces any pleading which
coincides with its dictates. What was the nature of her husband's
inward monitor Helen had never been able to discover and at this moment
she realized keenly her ignorance.

"Will," she said earnestly, laying down her salad-fork and spoon, "I
think it is wrong for us to live as we do."

He shrugged his shoulders, looking at her curiously.

"I cannot flatter myself that you care to return to the old
uncomfortableness."

She flushed warmly, with a keen pang of mingled pain and indignation.

"No," she replied. "No; never that. It is not for ourselves, but for
others."

"Others! Fenton?"

She flushed more deeply still.

"I have told you already that you are mistaken about my regard for
Arthur. It was not he I meant."

She served her guest, and sat playing nervously with her fork as he ate
and praised the salad.

"Mr. Herman sent for me the other afternoon," she began again, forcing
herself to speak calmly. "My model Ninitta is very fond of him, and
chose to be jealous of his praise of my work. It might have all gone
over without an outburst, I suppose, if she had not had her attention
called to the fact that I had modeled his head for December. Why she
had never happened to notice it I don't know; she was in the studio
constantly."

"Not when he was there?" queried Dr. Ashton, holding up his graceful,
antique wine-glass and admiring it.

"No, not when he was there," repeated his wife. "She had pounded off
the head when he sent for me with a mallet she had picked up in his
studio. I never saw him in such a rage. She was gone when I got there.
She didn't make any attempt to conceal it. She came stalking
melodramatically into his studio with the mallet and laid it down.
'There,' said she, 'now kill me. I have broken her work.' It was like a
fashion magazine story. He thought at first she had gone mad."

"So she had. Women are always insane when they are jealous. I wish I
had Arthur's knack at epigram, and I'd make that sound original."

"He says he was very harsh," Helen continued, "though I fancy he could
not be quite that in any circumstances. It was very hard," she added
with a sigh. "It was like looking at a dead child to see my best work
ruined. It was really a part of myself."

"But can't it be repaired? It was in the clay, wasn't it?"

"Yes, but I fear for my exhausted enthusiasm. I can never do it as it
was before. My poor, unlucky December."

She toyed with her glass absently, apparently for the moment forgetting
her companion, who continued his supper with no less relish than
before. He watched her keenly, however, fully aware that there was more
to be told. He was a man too accustomed to follow any desire or indulge
any whim not to notice appreciatively, as he had noticed many times
before, how beautiful were the curves of his wife's arms and throat,
and with what grace her head was poised. He had once defined a liberal
man as one who could appreciate his own wife, and he would have been
far more insensible than he was, if, with this beautiful woman before
him he had not been, judged by his own standard, extremely liberal.

"And this has what to do with the question of our relations being
known?" he asked.

She started from her reverie, the red again showing faintly in her
cheek.

"It is hardly fair," she answered in a tone softer and lower than that
in which she had been speaking, "to tell you all that Mr. Herman said.
He wishes to marry me."

"And you wish you were free to have it so?"

There was once more a pause. Helen busied herself in an elaborate
arrangement of the torn lettuce leaves upon her plate, seemingly
concentrating all her thoughts upon forming them into an intricate
figure.

"Will," she said, suddenly, lifting her eyes and leaning towards him,
"I do not know how to make you understand. I haven't succeeded so well
in my attempts thus far in life as to be very sanguine of doing it now.
You do not know how ashamed and contemptible I felt for being party to
the deception that made it possible for him to speak so to me. He was
so honest, so earnest; he was so unconscious of the barriers between
us. I felt that I had done him such an irreparable wrong by concealing
the truth. He had a right to know that I am a married woman."

"Did you tell him?"

"No; but I must. I want to be free from the promise we made to each
other."

"It all comes," returned her husband without any show of irritation,
"from my telling Fenton."

"I cannot see what that has to do with it. I like the absence from
questioning, the avoidance of gossip, as much as you can; but it makes
me feel as if I were a living lie to have Mr. Herman bringing his
honest love to me to be met only by deception. It is cruel and it is
wrong."

"That depends entirely upon how you define wrong," retorted Dr. Ashton
coolly. "I do not see why it is wrong for me to decline to sacrifice my
convenience to Mr. Herman's sentiment. But without going into the
question of metaphysics, let us look at the matter reasonably. Do you
love Mr. Herman?"

Notwithstanding the studied nonchalance of his tone, a glance into his
eyes might have shown Helen how much importance he attached to her
answer. A woman is peculiarly dangerous when she is telling one man
that another loves her. The masculine greed of possession is aroused by
the mere thought of a possible rival, and Dr. Ashton was conscious at
this moment of a kindling desire himself to win Helen's love, which he
knew perfectly well had never been his.

"That is not at all relevant," was her reply, her eyes downcast. "The
question of honesty is enough now. At least I respect Mr. Herman, and I
must treat him squarely, as you would say. You have always told me to
be 'a square fellow,' you know," she added, raising her glance with a
faint smile.

"But if you tell him," said her husband, with a subtle tinge of
impatience in his tone, "others must know. You can't go on letting one
after another into the secret without its soon becoming public
property."

"Why not then?" she responded. "I wonder we have been able to keep it
so long. It is sure to be known now you have come home. I do not mean
to proclaim it upon the housetops; but to let it work out if it will.
What harm can it do?"

"It will harm me. My life is not so secluded as yours is, Helen, It
will make things confoundedly awkward. I shall have to go about giving
endless explanations. Besides, here is Arthur's wife. I particularly
don't want her to know."

"Why not? It is precisely that I was coming to. She seems to feel far
more kindly to me than I should have supposed possible. I can't lie to
her, Will. She has already asked me questions about my past life hard
to answer. I want to tell her, so that we may have an honest basis for
our friendship. I don't want to lose my hold on her."

"Nor on Arthur," acquiesced he gravely. "It is for that reason that I
say you had better not tell her. I usually know what I am saying, do I
not? I tell you it is for your own sake that I warn you to be quiet.
Arthur isn't going to be held in the leash very long by that piece of
china-ware piety, and it is to you he will naturally turn for sympathy.
Don't spoil your chance of his friendship by breaking with her yet."

"Will," his wife said, with a glitter in her eyes he knew of old,
"sometimes you talk like a very fiend incarnate."

"That," he replied rising, "is precisely what I am. There are a few
rare, but fairly well authenticated cases on record, Helen, where a man
under stress of circumstances, has been able to keep his own counsel;
women without a confidant go mad. For your own sake you'd better trust
me, now that Arthur isn't available; so I'll come and see you again. I
am obliged to you for this jolly little supper. Your salads always were
perfection. I'd like to stay and have you make me some coffee, but I
have an engagement at twelve. Good-night."

XXI.

HIS PURE HEART'S TRUTH.
Two Gentlemen of Verona; iv.--2.

When Grant Herman attempted to speak with Mrs. Greyson at the Fenton's
reception, he had more in view than simply the desire of being near the
woman he loved. He was full of trouble and bewilderment, and
instinctively turned toward her for aid and sympathy.

The scene between himself and Helen, to which the latter had alluded in
her conversation with Dr. Ashton, was of far deeper import than her
words might have seemed to imply. In the first shock of discovering
that her work was broken she had been so overcome, that although she
struggled bravely to conceal her feelings, she had excited the
sculptor's keenest pity; and it not unnaturally followed that in
attempting to express his sympathy he found himself telling his love
before he was aware. He had determined to be silent upon this subject.
Uncertain what were Helen's feelings towards him and restrained by a
sense of loyalty to the bond which united him to Ninitta, he had
resolved to bury his love in his own breast, at least until time gave
him opportunity of honorably declaring it. Now circumstances betrayed
him into an avowal of his passion; and he was not without the indignant
feeling that Ninitta's act had freed him from all obligations to her.
It might have required an ingenious casuist to arrive logically at the
conclusion that an injury which the Italian had done to another
released him from his plighted word, but the person injured was the
woman he loved, and he blindly felt that Ninitta had struck at himself
through his most sensitive feelings. He renounced all the fealty to
which he had been held by a sense of honor, and he now poured out to
Helen the full tide of his passionate love.

The sculptor was not a man to be lightly moved, but it is these calm,
grave natures that once aroused are most irresistible. His passionate
outburst took Helen unaware; she scarcely knew what she did, and she
became suddenly aware of a truth so overwhelming that every thing else
faded into insignificance beside it.

"I love you!" he cried out; and at the word she first knew, with a
poignant pang of mingled bliss and anguish, that she too loved him.

It seemed to her that some power above her own volition ruled her, as
in moments of high excitement the body sometimes appears to declare its
independence of the will, and to act wholly by its own decisions. She
was aware that she raised her eyes to his, although she would have
given much to avoid his glance; and she knew that it was from what he
read there that he took courage to fold her in his embrace.

Yet with his arms about her and his piercing kisses upon her face,
Helen felt as if sinking helplessly into a mighty ocean; as if all
struggles must be unavailing, and she could only yield to the
resistless love which engulfed her.

From this first feeling of powerlessness, however, her strong nature
sprang with a sharp recoil. She was too noble to surrender without a
struggle. She would not even think whether she loved this man; that
might be considered upon some safe vantage ground; now all energy must
be concentrated upon escaping from the deadly peril in which she found
herself.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14